


you're more like doves / that are taking flight

by helenecixous



Category: Last Tango In Halifax
Genre: F/F, idk im stretching my legs w this one, probably a bit crap but, who cares amirite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 09:00:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8007166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helenecixous/pseuds/helenecixous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A thick silence follows your words, and the seconds drag on, take years to pass as you realise the implications of what you’ve just said. You’re about to open your mouth, to blunder around for a while until you land on something that’ll save you, that’ll tell her that you don’t actually want her to be in your bed - but of course you do, you just don’t want her to know that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're more like doves / that are taking flight

The room is at once pale but glaringly bright, and you struggle to sit up. Your eyelids feel like they've been glued together and when you rub them you swear under your breath, because you've got to stop passing out with your makeup still on. You rub the sticky black smears from your fingers onto your jeans, and now you're sitting up properly you look around, your head full of sand and your tongue thick and heavy and tasting sickeningly of rum and wine and whatever else you'd pumped into your body last night. You can tell from the sound of the day and the colour of the room that it's still early, and you groan as you try to stretch - why the fuck had you slept on the armchair, when there's a  _ perfectly  _ good sofa over there - and you look, as though you need to confirm that there is, still, your sofa, still in front of your fire in your living room. And then you see that Caroline's there, and she's sprawled out, complete with her legs that go on for days and hips that you've probably spent hours now, staring at. You crane your neck, and her makeup is still perfect and subtle and her lips are parted as she snuffles softly in her sleep. You consider for a second throwing a cushion at her, because you feel and look like shit and you're hungover - but so is she. And she still has the audacity to look so prim and proper, like fucking Sleeping Beauty part two, and that annoys you because you've always fucking hated that film. You wonder as the cushions you're wedged between relinquish you and you stumble to your feet, whether that makes you Prince Charming, or whatever the fuck his name is, or, and this is more likely; whether that makes you the evil bitch who'd put her under the curse. You suppose you did, she's on _ your _ sofa, drunk after consuming  _ your _ alcohol, and you quite like the idea of you as - who? Maleficent, you think. You've always fancied the pants off of Angelina Jolie, and wasn't she in that remake? You shuffle around the living room and make a half hearted attempt at tidying, and you reckon that if you were to play a part in this fucked up fairytale, you'd also like to be the person who kisses her awake. Maybe not now, when her breath probably smells like something died in her mouth, and yours won't be much better, but one day, maybe. You'd kiss her awake and keep kissing her and she'd wake up and kiss you back and there'd be no wedding the next day because you'd both be too busy exchanging kisses for the next week, at least. As you give up with cleaning, down a few painkillers, and creep up the stairs to shower, you laugh to yourself. “Brothers Grimm, eat your soddin’ hearts out,” you mutter, stepping under the stream of water that's a shade too hot, and you dare to hope that the shower would cleanse you of your hangover, too.

 

It doesn’t, obviously, and you get dressed feeling too warm and vaguely sticky and a little bit nauseous. You go through the motions of drying your hair, and even though you feel like you’ve been hit by a freight train you put makeup on anyway, and that definitely isn’t because Caroline Elliot is passed out on your sofa downstairs. When you finally stumble downstairs in your sock clad feet, you’re half expecting her to be awake already. She’s not. You approach her warily, as though she’s a lion that’s only pretending to be asleep to lure you closer, and then she’ll rear up and - and what? Caroline’s not a physical fighter, you reason. The worst thing she’s capable of is fixing you with an icy, slightly patronising stare, a cruel quirk of the lips, and maybe some yelling. That last part you’re not sure about, because you’ve only ever seen her yell at John. But either way, you smile to yourself, because you could  _ definitely  _ take her in a fight.

She stirs when you get closer, demonstrating that weird ability that all humans seem to possess; the one where you wake up a minute before your alarm, where a small part buried deep in your subconscious is completely aware that you’re about to be woken, like it’s trying to get there first.

“Caroline,” you mutter, and your voice is still gravelly and rough. “Caroline.” You reach out and give her shoulder a shove, and then you swear because you’d not meant to actually  _ shove  _ her.

She frowns, manages to look formidable even as she drags herself into her hungover reality. “Bugger off,” she whispers, lifts her whole body and turns, buries her head in the back of your sofa.

“Caroline,” you try again, perching on the fraction of cushion that’s free. “I’ve got pills for you.”

As she moves again, peering over her shoulder and squinting in your general direction, you get a whiff of her perfume, and aside from the fact that it makes you grin like an idiot because that’s something you’ve always loved about women - their innate ability to smell  _ amazing  _ at all times - you’re also impressed, because the tangy smell of stale booze and sweat had been clinging to you when you woke up, and she still manages to smell of fucking Gucci, or whatever it is she wears.

“Pills?” she croaks expectantly, and you snap out of it with a sheepish grin.

You hand her the tray of paracetamol and she sits up, groaning. One half of her hair has taken leave of her bobble and looks like it’s given up on gravity too, and she drags her fingers through it, looking angry as though the whole world is to blame for the state of her hair and her headache. She pops out two pills, and you take the tray back and give her the glass of water instead. She mumbles something that feels like a thank you as she pops the pills onto her tongue and takes a long drink, her eyelids fluttering closed.

“Christ,” she manages eventually, looking up at you. “I feel terrible.”

“Yeah, well, I reckon half a bottle of tequila would do that to a person. I can’t believe that you, Caroline Elliot, a goddess among mere mortals, has been defeated by some liquid.” Of course, you don’t tell her how awful you’d felt, because right now you’ve got one up on her, and no matter how close you get or how things change between you, you’ll stop wanting to one up her approximately  _ never. _

“Shut up,” she groans, and she’s got those hangover shakes. “It’s too early for that.”

You take pity on her, and smile. “Go an’ shower,” you tell her. “I’ll make some breakfast or somethin’.”

She pulls a face at you - her nose all scrunched up. “When did we get so domestic?” she asks, and you school your features to not give away the way your heart just leapt.

“Good question,” you say, standing up and shoving your hands into your pockets. “We’re obviously not  _ that  _ domestic, seeing as you still end up crashing on the sofa.”

A thick silence follows your words, and the seconds drag on, take years to pass as you realise the implications of what you’ve just said. You’re about to open your mouth, to blunder around for a while until you land on something that’ll save you, that’ll tell her that you don’t actually want her to be in your bed - but of course you  _ do,  _ you just don’t want her to know that - when she shrugs easily, and the tension shatters. Time resumes its usual format, and you almost exhale in relief.

“I’m not in the habit of inviting myself into people’s beds,” Caroline says finally, and it feels like it could be loaded, like it could have some kind of ulterior meaning, but it also could just mean that she’s thinking more about the way her head’s pounding than what she’s actually saying.

You grin, and hope that’s the right response as you turn away. “Bacon and eggs?” you ask, lingering for long enough to hear her hum her assent before you leave the room like your arse is on fire.

 

By the time Caroline comes downstairs, you’ve shredded the sides of your thumb nails and cooked two plates of general breakfast food. The kettle’s on and the table’s laid out, and you think she’s right - you are domestic, and you can’t remember for the life of you when that had happened. She comes into the kitchen and she’s wearing clean clothes, because she’s started packing clothes when she thinks she’ll end up staying the night now, and you’ve got a pile of her clothes that you’ve washed for her sitting in your wardrobe. It’s like you’re actually married to her, just without the fun parts of marriage, like the sex and the romance.

You smile at her, gesture to the food on the table, and thank god that neither of you are pukers. “Feelin’ better?” you ask, and she nods as she sits down.

“Near enough,” she says, and she’s smiling back at you. “We’ve got to stop doing that.”

“Doin’ what?” you ask, ready to rebuke anything she says about you both being ‘responsible adults’, because why should being an adult mean you have to be responsible, and why should being responsible mean you’re no longer allowed to enjoy a drink?

But she surprises you and her grin sharpens as she shrugs and looks down at her food. “Sleeping on furniture that isn’t designed to be slept on.”

You falter, almost choke on some baked beans, and save yourself by reaching for your glass of water and taking a few hearty swigs. You decide to play it safe, and arch an eyebrow at her. “I’m not sure Raff would appreciate you stealin’ his bed,” you say.

“I can’t sleep at the back of houses,” she says, pursing her lips.

You laugh, rub your forehead, play along with her. “Maybe you should steal mine then,” you shrug, and then: “I’ll take Raff’s.”

She nods, as though she’s considering, and you smile to yourself, trying to focus on the way her fingers are curled around her cutlery rather than the playful smirk on her lips and the ways in which you’d like to kiss her.

“I think I’d get quite cold,” she hums, and you shake your head. If she’s angling for what you think she’s angling for, you want to make her say it.

“I’ve got blankets. Plenty of blankets.”

“Are you being deliberately obtuse?”

“Not all of us had a fancy education,” you say, feigning ignorance and innocence in equal parts. “Don’t understand half of what you go on about.”

She rolls her eyes and returns her attention to her food, and you’d be disappointed and berating yourself for a Missed Opportunity, but this one feels unfinished. It’s like whatever is about to develop between you both isn’t the kind of thing that develops over a table of breakfast food.

 

You finish eating and she insists on helping you wash up before she goes home, so you both end up standing at the sink in companionable silence, sometimes bumping elbows and reaching past each other for things you don’t really need. You spend a lot of the time preoccupied with piecing together the night before, and letting yourself think about what she means, what she really wants, when she does all of this obscure non-flirting. You make up your mind to ask her, or to make some joke about Sleeping Beauty and ask what her secret is, when you realise that she’s somehow cornered you and she’s standing very close and looking at you very intently. You look up at her, and everything inside you is trying to remember how to work - your lungs don’t remember the taste of oxygen, your heart doesn’t know if it wants to be a hummingbird or dead, and your stomach seems to be training for the gymnastic part of the fucking Olympics.

You’re trying to formulate a witty question, but your brain is just a heap of jelly, and at some point your hands had found their way to her hips, and you decide that, as Caroline places her hands on your waist, you must be dreaming, or drunk, or quite possibly dead.

“I think I should like to share your bed with you,” Caroline says, and her thumb, you realise, is lightly brushing the underside of your bra.

“Y-you would, would you?” you manage, pushing yourself forward as you gaze at her almost defiantly.

“I think so,” she murmurs, and you hadn’t thought it was possible for her to stand any closer to you, but you were wrong.

You tilt your head, watch her for a few seconds. You both know without a doubt where this is going, and you both know that it had probably been drunkenly hinted at last night, and every other night you’d spent together before then, and then you’re pulling her forward, reaching up yourself as you let your lips meet hers.

It’s every bit like you’d imagined - a little awkward at first, and then there’s the thrill of a new person, new tastes, new hands and sounds and smells, and when you finally break apart you murmur into her neck that she’s welcome in your bed any time she likes. Her hands are already busy beneath your shirt when she smirks and thanks you, and pulls you impossibly closer. 

**Author's Note:**

> this is pretentious and a bit shit and very rushed but i haven't written anything in ages and they're easy to warm up with lmao sorry


End file.
